


Siberia

by JenCforCarolina



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Gore, destiny ghost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 04:29:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6785266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hunters in dangerous woods crossing paths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Siberia

**Author's Note:**

> [Find it on Tumblr here.](http://jencforcarolina.tumblr.com/post/144042299979/siberia)

She drew her blade through the last throat in the clearing. The Dreg dropped at her feet.

Eyahn rummaged about the corpses, gathering ether sups and stripping house banners for the cryptarchy where possible.

“Got it again. Due west.”

She froze and stood at her Ghost’s acknowledgment, staring west, peering at the tall grasses. “I see nothing.”

“Motion trackers identified movement. Quick and fleeting. Nothing more.”

She kept staring. This was the fourth band of Fallen they had come across in the past week. After each battle, Star always noted something moving behind them. Both of them had just about deemed it an anomaly at this point.

“Wind?” Star offered.

“There is none.” Eyahn said.

“You could always call out.”

The Hunter hesitated at the suggestion, never keen on instigating social interactions.

“We will keep moving.” She stowed her blade and moved to the riverside. The land steepened in front of her, cliffs leading up to a mountain. She had to cross it, couldn’t afford to use her ship. The Fallen were thicker here, she had dodged more patrols than she had killed. It was a sign she was getting close.

Her mission was scouting for an unknown House lair. A banished Baron of the Kings had thrown his weight around and begun to amass a following here. Her job was to document the scale of the threat. Neutralize if the Vanguard deemed it necessary.

She didn’t want to skirt this mountain, the nearest passable traverse was a day’s walk east. They had managed to obtain geological mapping of the area from a patrol a couple years back, and had studied it en route to the continent on her ship.

Securing all her weapons on her back or in transmat storage, she faced the short cliff before her. She dug her insole into the first grab she could find, then reached up to grip her fingers into a crack and climbed, stretching to reach places taller than her and gathering her legs on small outcroppings before lunging upwards and hooking a heel on a higher rock, then pulling herself up. Finally she scrambled over the top and began picking her way up steep not-quite-cliff inclines, using boulders and tree trunks to keep her balance. It was slow and precarious, but as the trees thinned and the ground cover became more rocky, it was apparent that wouldn’t be the most difficult terrain she’d find.

“Eyahn.” Star said. “I don’t think you can do this.”

Before them stretched a dizzyingly sheer hill of shale, the slippery rocks coating the ground. Above them the mountain peaks strutted like saw blades into the sky, all sharp and jagged edges. She knew Star was right. The shale would be slippery, even slower and more dangerous to traverse. Even if she didn’t fall, any false step would send a cacophony of stone sliding down. It would betray her position, and out there with zero cover she’d be easy pickings for a sniper. Reluctantly, she turned back. “The pass.”

“Seems like it will be necessary. I’ll alert the Vanguard our progress is slowed but still being made.”

It was easier to move downhill, Eyahn all but hopped from one boulder to the next, back down the cliff she had climbed. She reached the final steps before the edge but stopped, frozen by the scene below her.

Star emerged beside her, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing through Eyahn’s visor. “What happened?” She murmured.

The bodies they had left in the clearing were destroyed, limbs ripped off and chest mutilated. The Hunter moved forward with morbid fascination. The chest plates had been torn from their warriors’ torsos and their rib cages shattered. Blood and gore littered the area.

“They were eaten.” Star said softly, inspecting one of the corpses. “Something devoured these. Hive?”

Eyahn shook her head, touched the ground beside one of the bodies. “Paws. Animal.”

“We shouldn’t stay here. In case we are interrupting.” It was a sensible statement, and the Hunter stood, stepping gingerly over the scene, and moving on into the woods. She walked more carefully now, quieter and more aware, despite no motion on trackers or any activity on any other sensors.

She walked the day to the pass. Came across one more isolated patrol in an open clearing. They were guards to scan the entrance, watching for a sign of someone like her. They never saw her coming.

She was no more than a breeze that swept across their positions. Each enemy dropped to her blade with silence and ease. The last, a Vandal, she struck and with it’s dying soul she touched the light and vanished from view. She backed up and leapt into a tree, hovering on a mid-height branch, invisible.

“What are you planning, precisely?” Star asked in the safety of her helmet.

“Few minutes.” Eyahn replied, gaze intent on the ground. She did not have to wait long.

The sunlight quivered on a particular patch of underbrush, and a large creature lifted its shoulders just slightly, prowling out of hiding. The emergence of stripes from the floor of ferns seemed liquid and mystical, as the tiger approached the closest corpse. It pressed a large paw to one of the bodies and dipped its head down, ripping a strip of armor off with a quick turn of it’s head.

“Cat.” Eyahn whispered wonderingly inside her helm.

“That… is an understatement.” Star commented. “Well. Now we know the culprit.”

Eyahn slid along the trunk, gently and silently letting herself down. Her boots touched the forest floor without a sound, but the animal’s ears perked and it’s head swiveled towards her. It crouched over it’s meal and snarled. It kept it up for a minute, but when the Hunter didn’t move further, and did not respond to the snarling, the cat stopped, and hesitantly resumed its meal. It glanced at her after each bite, as if ensuring she wasn’t going to take it.

“It looks feral Eyahn, you shouldn’t stay.”

Closer to the creature now, and with a better view, she could see it looked poor. It’s fur was dirty and matted. The muck on one of its hind legs looked almost like dried blood, and it held it at an angle where it was not carrying much weight. Its fur seemed to clump, and through the stripes it looked like there were ribs.

“No prey. The Fallen drove them out.” She said. “And hurt. Can’t hunt.”

“Well, you’ve helped it then, but we must keep moving.”

Reluctantly, Eyahn turned away. The cat froze and began snarling again, watching her with a flicking tail as she crossed its line of sight. She looked it dead in the eye until trees blocked her from view, then turned back around and kept walking.

It had been perhaps an hour when the hairs on the back of her neck rose, and there was a flicker on her motion tracker. She froze and whirled, pistol drawn but down, because she knew what it was.

Cat froze as her eyes landed on it. It had one paw at a tilt, ready to move forward, but it watched her expectantly.

“Oh great.” Star muttered in Eyahn’s ear.

The Hunter turned her body but kept her eyes on the cat, looking over her shoulder as she took a few steps forward. The cat matched her pace by pace until she stopped again. It stopped as well. She took a step backwards, hesitantly, slowly. Cat shifted, but didn’t retreat. She took a couple more, equally as slow, before it took a full step back.

“Eyahn you’ve got movement in front of you, you don’t have time for this. Leave the tiger be.” She tore herself away and towards the end of the pass, weapon drawn and ready.

Cat moved behind her, and she froze for a moment, glancing towards it again, but it did not appear threatening. It was beside her now, a yard away, neck lowered and hackles raised, tail flicking with anticipation. It paded like liquid over the dirt, not giving her so much as even a glance. It crept a few feet ahead of her and crouched, staring forward up the pass.

The field of boulders on the hill climbing up to the ridge were plenty of cover, and near perfect terrain for a small bladedancer. “Let nothing by.” She said to the tiger, knowing it didn’t really understand her. She moved, slinking up the right side of the pass, taking cover behind boulders, darting between them. At one point she slowed, crouched, exhaled, let the light take her visibility away. She walked forward as if in a dream, or underwater, bogged down and muted, but temporarily safe. She saw the first of the vandal scouts, behind a boulder of it’s own. She passed it, passed others, and a Servitor lurking behind a particularly large boulder. She paused once to regain her stealth and passed more.

She climbed the ridge without a hitch, cresting the hill and crouching there, as her latest wave of camouflage faded. Down to her left was the path she had just climbed, the enemies now evident, hidden from view from below but not above. To the right, a valley sprawled, and at the heart of it rested a Ketch. “Seems this unnamed house is more extensive than we first thought.” Star murmured in her ear.

“Report.”

“With that Servitor here? Signal will be detected. Take it out first.”

She stood, glanced back down to the left. A Dreg saw the motion and turned to look at her. She launched off the earth, drawing her blade in the same motion, arc crackling up her arm. She allowed herself to fall upon the Dreg, her blade singing with Light. Her feet didn’t touch the ground, the force of the slash propelling her away and into her next victim. The Vandal’s body was relieved of it’s head, the Shank was given a new cut in it’s plating, and the Servitor, screeching alarm, was shattered. Down, down the hill she tore, shredding bodies and mechanics. It was when she reached the bottom and stood, released of the Light, that she saw Cat again. It stood over a corpse, the Dreg’s blood leaking into the dirt. It did not eat, did not crush the creature’s ribs or crack its skull. It stood, watching her expectantly.

“Good Cat.” She breathed, a little joy seeping into her voice. It perked it’s ears at her voice, flicked it’s tail.

“Oh brother…” Star muttered.


End file.
